Threads
by colorful swirls
Summary: The only thing she hadn't planned for, as it turned out, was Sirius Black. — SiriusMarlene, human!AU.


**disclaimer**: I don't own Harry Potter.

**written for**: Quidditch League Competition — Round 13 (Appleby Arrows, Chaser 1).

:::

If Marlene McKinnon is anything at all, she is a planner. Which doesn't mean to say that she's prepared for everything.

It means that she has entire life stretched out in front of her by the end of primary school. First, she'll finish school, with flying colors, of course. She'll go to university on the outskirts of London, receive a degree in art. She'll have her own studio by twenty-six; it'll be across from her flat, which is much more orderly and sophisticated than the small, dark, oil-streaked, paint-covered art building. It'll smell like freesia.

She'll be married by thirty, to her longtime university sweetheart, with her longtime university best friend as Maid of Honor, and her fiancee's charming older brother as Best Man.

Her and this unknown but undoubtedly amazing man, they'll have produced three children by the time she hits the peak of forty. A boy, sensitive and sweet, yet always about to burst with feeling; a girl, outgoing and smart and beautiful, brown curls and hazel eyes; another boy, this one rugged and athletic and eager to please.

They'll live in a tall wooden house on the countryside, with her new, renovated, studio down the road. Her children practically grow up in that studio, the smell of chalk dust and drying paint and oil forever the scent of Mom. She'll draw them anything they want, put it up in their rooms — and then one Mother's Day, they'll draw her a family portrait. The sensitive boy will have drawn it in crayon, whilst the outgoing girl nagged and the blonde little baby boy sucked on his knuckles. When they hand it to her, she'll smile and cry and say it's the most beautiful picture she's ever seen. She'll then kiss them all wetly on the cheek and squeeze them until they squirm in her grasp.

They'll adopt a puppy when she's fifty, and she'll be dead and gone before she reaches ninety — but she'll have lived long enough to see all three of them marry and have children, and she'll see her eldest grandchildren — a girl with a thin face and dark curls — give birth to her eldest great grandchild, another girl, this one with the sensitive boy's hair and her own bright blue eyes.

The only thing she hadn't planned for it, as it turns out, is Sirius Black.

:::

He's an exchange student from another school in England, and from the moment he swaggers into her classroom, looking as full of himself as a eight-year-old can get, she wishes they could exchange him _back_.

He's a hit with everyone else, though. Smart and handsome and confident; he's exactly the sort of model they need to look up to.

And Sirius Black — Sirius Black takes it all so easily.

:::

It occurs to her sometime after he first arrives that she watches him entirely too much.

And he watches _her_ entirely too much.

Which is something that makes her both tinge pink and gag, because Sirius Black is to wonderfulness as Sirius Black is to horribleness.

:::

She supposes it'd been a mistake to mention the new boy in class to her Mum.

"Is he nice?" she'd asked at first, which was fine.

"No," Marlene had answered immediately.

"Is he smart?" That was Mum, always reaching to find something good in everyone.

"Everyone seems to think he is." She could hear the frown in her voice.

"Well.. is he cute?"

At this, Marlene'd wrinkled her nose. "Er," she'd said. "A bit."

And Mum had just '_hmmed_' in an odd way, which wasn't altogether very mysterious.

The next morning, though, Mum had brushed her normally straggly dirty blonde hair back, pulled it into a bright blue ribbon, set out a navy dress for her to wear — complete with ruffles and flowers and lace edges — and packed an extra sugar biscuit in her lunch bag, telling her to give it to Sirius and "make him feel welcome."

Marlene wore the dress, and (secretly) admired her hair, accepted the compliments. She'd refrained from running in mud on the playground, she'd been nice to all the people she'd previously been rude to that year, and she had even wished Sirius Black a happy morning.

But she ate the second sugar biscuit, stuffing it in her mouth and making sure to smile at Sirius with the sparkly crumbs still on her lips.

:::

She doesn't wear any other dresses, but she does start a collection of blue ribbons, convincing Mum to tie her hair up in one each day.

"I used to wear ribbons," Mum says one day, as she's running the brush swiftly though Marlene's hair. "They were the first thing to get your father's attention." Her eyes become wistful — they always do, whenever they discuss her father.

"Did you plan to get his attention?"

"No." Mum smiles. "I've told you a hundred times, the best things happen when you don't plan them, baby."

:::

One of the many things she hadn't planned concerning Sirius was becoming his partner. For a project. For an _art_ project.

It's finally time to show him how very wrong he is about her; she is not the quiet, sad girl. She is the girl that watches, taking note. She is the girl that can beat his arse at anything to do with art.

(She tells him that, under a tree he'd scribbled Sirius into. He scoffs. She smirks, cocking her hip, determined, and then she snatches his pocket knife abruptly and scrawls Marlene into the tree beside his, purely to spite him. It doesn't work — he only grins.)

:::

He's quite annoying to work with, actually. Creative and intuitive and good for an idea, but the instant she begins to work, he pips up with a question.

"Do you ever think about dying?" His voice is different than usual. It's lower, for one, and it takes her a moment before realizing: the ever present cockiness she'd grown to hate isn't there.

"What about it?" Marlene wonders where this is coming from. She creases her eyebrows, trying to find the perfect shade of orange. They're supposed to be painting a tree, and then labeling all the processes that go on beneath the bark.

He shrugs. "Just.. what it's like." His eyes delve into hers, and she finds herself — for the first time — truly finding him attractive.

"Easier than falling asleep," she says lightly. He grins at her. She finds herself smiling back, and it's then that she remembers something she'd heard in the hallway, back when he'd first came to her school; Sirius is an orphan.

"I hope so," he answers, still beaming at her. To her own surprise, she's still smiling at him.

"Me, too," she says.

She wonders what she's feeling — if this sudden squirminess and simultaneous happiness is one of the imminent threads of her plans snapping.

:::

He kisses her in that same spot under the trees five years in the future, and she has the same feeling.

She thinks this time, though, it's the feeling of a new plan snapping into place; this one isn't as detailed, though.

It has one specific: Sirius Black to her as husband is to wife.

:::

**a/n**: please don't follow/favorite without reviewing, thanks!


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